A GLITCH IN THE MATRIX

28347568 CONTAINS 826589002 SOME 8976598765 SPOILERS

Are we living in a giant computer simulation? Are we all just incredibly advanced aliens who've jacked into a sandbox videogame so we can spend seventy Earth years pretending we're living in Stevenage? Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? Are we all stuck in the Matrix? Er, no. No, we're not and it isn't. Director Rodney Ascher seems to specialise in movies asking Questions To Which The Answer Is No - from Room 237 (does The Shining contain proof that Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landings? No, it doesn't) to The Nightmare (are the figures seen by sleep paralysis sufferers something more sinister than too much cheese and bondage porn before bed? No, they're not). Now: is the entirety of what we call Earth just another multiplayer day in Grand Theft Auto XII? Actually: no, it isn't. Wow, that was easy.

This absolute hogwash of a pretend documentary seeks to explore the possibility that we're all Sims. To this end there's a vast number of film clips from The Matrix (obviously), The Truman Show, They Live and The Wizard Of Oz, along with Blade Runner, Total Recall and Starship Troopers because one of the experts making the case is Philip K Dick via a 1970s videotaped lecture. The other experts on view aren't actually on view: they're hidden behind CGI costumes of a robot, a space alien and some kind of lion, blathering nonsensically.

A Glitch In The Matrix is named after the phenomenon that you occasionally see, where two people in identical clothing are sat next to each other on the tube, or three green Nissan Micras are parked together outside Tesco: seen not as a mere chance coincidence but a coding error in the randomness generator that suggests a deeper hidden layer of reality. Oddly, this glitch is something the film doesn't mention, being more concerned with utter, utter dribble at the expense of any actual evidence beyond anecdotal what-if from people wearing CGI spacesuits and animal avatars. And when your main spokesmen are those guys in their bedrooms, Elon Musk and a guy who watched The Matrix hundreds of times and then casually killed his parents with a shotgun, I'm thinking it's fair to say the case is pretty weak.

Essentially it's nothing more than another version of what an afterlife might bring - Heaven, Nirvana, Valhalla, or just Level Two. The fact that you can build things in Minecraft doesn't mean we're in a gigantic Minecraft ourselves: you can build things in Lego as well but that (and The Lego Movie, oddly) never gets mentioned either. There's a certain measure of Terror In The Aisles fun to be had from naming the film snippets as they come up (bonus points if you spot The Thirteenth Floor), but the idea behind it is tinfoil hat silly and the eyewitnesses entirely unconvincing. (But then I'm really the Zargon Overlord Xarqak who invented the game, so I would say that.)

*

GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS

Enough, please. This latest (and very, very hopefully last) entry in the series is perfect only in its encapsulation of everything that's wrong with modern Hollywood cinema. On any other level it's a massive, lumbering failure: not funny, not scary, not entertaining, a thorough and comprehensive waste of a hundred million dollars of Columbia's money, six quid of yours and damn near two hours of your afternoon. Like pretty much every franchise or series, from Indiana Jones or the Carry Ons through to Die Hard or Saw, Ghostbusters has gone on for maybe two films more than strictly necessary but nobody ever sensed the right moment to stop.

And it the case of Ghostbusters that moment was about thirty five years ago. Looking back at the first film, it was okay.... it was perfectly alright, the effects were great and it was funny and scary and the leads mostly likeable, but it's scarcely a masterpiece. Ghostbusters II was more of the same: perfectly alright but genuinely no more than that. Afterlife, however, was a travesty and its use of the late Harold Ramis was unforgiveable - and that leaves the non-canonical The One With The Gurlz In It as the most enjoyable of the four. And to be honest, that's the one I'm most likely to rewatch any time soon.

Ghost Busters: Frozen Empire (incidentally, the on-screen title is Ghost Busters and not Ghostbusters) is so scared of doing anything new that the only thing it can do is more of the same. All the Spenglers are now back at New York (because...?) and in the old firehouse (because...?) which is again in danger of being closed down by Mayor Walter Peck (because...?) - until Ray Stantz is sold a mysterious orb containing an ancient demon that if it gets loose will freeze the world. And Winston Zeddemore now runs a massive paranormal lab and has just such a machine that will set it free...

The answer to all the becauses is that Frozen Empire is stuck in that trap of having to move forward while standing still. We're at the firehouse because that's where the first two films happened. Walter Peck is not the mayor because that's any kind of logical character progression, he's the mayor because William Atherton was in the first film. Slimer and the Stay-Puft things are in it not because they have to be, but because they were in the previous ones. The film is so scared of doing anything different, anything innovative, that it can only tap into nostalgia: all it has to trade on is the goodwill we (supposedly) feel to the characters and trappings forty years down the line.

And nostalgia is the trap, of course: they're so busy trying to recapture that old magic that they're not creating any new magic. They're so obsessed with harking back to what they loved forty years ago that they're not making anything for today's youngsters to get nostalgic about when they get to old age. Do something new, create something different. Maybe it won't work but at least you're trying. No-one's going to hark back to something that's designed wholly for harking back even further. Despite the inclusion of teenagers central to the story, this isn't a film for today's audience, it's a film for the 1984 and 1989 audience. But we're not who we were back then: we've changed, we've grown up. (Well, some of us have.)

I wouldn't mind so much if Frozen Empire had been at least passingly funny, but I didn't laugh once and I doubt I even smiled. I'm even wondering whether I should tag this one as Comedy. It's not that the jokes don't work, it's more that there aren't any real jokes, just pointless callbacks. And despite all the action and mayhem, much of it is just plain dull, it's way too long and messy, too much is happening and none of it is particularly interesting. Instead it's the stench of the studios just flogging the cash cow yet again because that's all they've got: the belief that an intellectual property is just banknotes waiting to be grabbed. The sense that if Ghostbusters '84 had failed but The Couch Trip or Doctor Detroit had been megahits, Dan Aykroyd would be making The Couch Trip VI and Son Of Doctor Detroit instead. (Be honest, no-one was that devastated when Ghostbusters 3 didn't happen in the early 90s.) 

I would have had more respect for this if they'd left the old guys out of it entirely and just concentrated on the Next Generation: they'd already passed the proton pack in Afterlife and that should have been enough of a farewell to them. Winston even says at one point "we're too old for this" and frankly he's right. And maybe so are we. Time to retire?

*

DUNE: PART TWO

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Well, it's not terrible. But that's about they best you can say about this second helping of Denis Villeneuve's epic adaptation of the Frank Herbert doorstopper that I couldn't get into thirty years ago and don't regret giving up on. The most important thing you need to know going in is that this isn't the end of it: it's merely the continuation and maybe we'll get a third one in three to four years' time that does actually wrap everything up. At least we knew Part One wasn't a standalone; but it was assumed that Part Two would be the second half and not just the second instalment, so there's a real sense of disappointment that this episode stops rather than ends.

Though it handily begins with a brief "Previously On Dune...." recap, it's vital to have seen the first one because frankly you'll be lost if you don't. We're back on Arrakis: the Harkonnens have wiped out most of the Atreides and, with the Padishah Emperor's Sardaukar troops, are now seeking to wipe out the native Fremen; Paul (Timothee Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) have escaped into the desert, avoided the sandworms and met up with Fremen leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem). Paul falls in love and becomes a Fedaykin (whatever that is), Jessica drinks the water of life and becomes the tribe's Reverend Mother, while the Bene Gesserit plot to manipulate the bloodlines to bring forth the Kwisatz Haderach...

Or something. (There may be spelling mistakes in this review because it's impossible to spell-check.) I actually rewatched Part One on Blu the previous night and even then I struggled with Dune: Part Two because for all the star names, for all the near-perfect special effects and visual design, for all the obvious skill and effort that went into it, it can't get away from a sense of self-importance. You can read into it any number of real-world parallels about holy wars, genocides, or rival superpowers fighting over other lands to plunder their natural resources if you want, or you can just watch it as a silly SF spectacular about people in silly costumes with sillier names. The trouble is, Denis Villeneuve is more interested in the former. Whatever else it might be, Nu-Dune is no fun. I'm not asking for Paul and Feyd to settle their differences with a custard pie fight, or for Emperor Christopher Walken's trousers to fall down, but 166 minutes is a long time to go with no amusement, intentional or not. "Shorter than Oppenheimer" is all that can be said for it on this level. While we're at it: Hans Zimmer's ethnically flavoured score adds nothing but decibels; it doesn't enhance the drama or emotion at any point and (while I accept this isn't its primary function) it isn't even a satisfying or interesting listen on its own terms.

Say what you like about David Lynch's stab at Dune: at least that moved. (Most people were just flat out wrong about that film anyway.) If nothing else, it was fun, it was entertaining and it had a proper ending, and none of that can be applied to the new ones. I regularly go back to the Lynch film, but I doubt I'll ever bother with either/any of the Villeneuves except as obligatory revision for when the next one comes along. Dune: Part Two is perfectly well done, perfectly well crafted and played, but it's ponderous, overlong and never sparks into life. Maybe if they'd injected a little more wild and crazy into it this incarnation of Dune could have been great. As it is, it's fine, but has no zip to it and it badly needs it.

***

BAGHEAD

CONTAINS SPOILERS

Yes, it's been a while. To be honest, there's hardly been anything on worth writing about or, indeed, seeing as far as I'm concerned for the last three months, to the extent that I put my cinema card on hold until they started showing things I was interested in. 2023 was scarcely a vintage year for horror films - too many unnecessary sequels that missed their marks, and few originals of any greatness - and 2024 has not started well. Night Swim was terrible, and somehow Baghead has managed to be no better.

In itself, there is nothing inherently wrong with the basic, potentially persuasive thrust of the film: a young woman inherits an old pub and discovers too late that she is now the keeper and guardian of a mysterious and ancient supernatural entity locked in the basement, with demonic powers that can become hopelessly addictive. And on no account must it ever be allowed to go free... A perfectly decent setup. However, what sinks Baghead is the fact that, even by modern horror movie standards, the entire thing takes place in near to total darkness, to the extent that I honestly thought there was something wrong with my eyesight as I constantly tried to make out something in the murk. Seriously, when the ambient light from the screen is drowned out by the ceiling lights in the cinema, something is wrong.

Not only does this make the film visually unappealing, it makes no dramatic sense either. The electricity in the building is quite clearly switched on, so why does our idiot heroine spend the entire time in the dark? Why does she constantly wander through the place - her own place, which she knows has a monster in the cellar - armed only with her mobile phone light and one of the feeblest torches in existence? Look, I understand that much of the film takes place in a  dim basement, but we the audience need to have some point of reference as to what we're supposed to be looking at. Just because the characters can't see anything doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to either. And it's clearly an aesthetic decision, because even the scenes taking place outside in broad daylight appeared to have been shot through the grandmother of all solar eclipses. Even what I've seen of the short film from which it's been expanded looks too dark.

Baghead certainly has an intriguing and interesting idea behind it, and there are a couple of effectively shivery frissons and jumpy moments early on which are nicely timed; I just wish I'd been able to see them properly! Those minor moments aside, it hasn't been realized nearly as well as it should have been. A disappointment, and an inauspicious start to the year.

**